Summer is here again, hopefully for longer than last year's abysmal Summer. The bright sunshine means that I am wearing my sunglasses whilst riding the bike, as I have no other means to reduce sunlight glare when riding.

The sunglasses I have aren't exactly sunglasses as such. I bought some glasses some years back with a deep blue tint, mostly for casual wearing. It turned out that they weren't as useful for casual wearing as I would have hoped, as they were far too dark to be worn after the Sun had set, and I don't often care to carry around a glasses case to change. One effect of the glasses' dark tint was that they took the edge off the sunlight quite effectively, making them good as sunglasses.

Last year, I bought myself some new glasses and asked this time for an orange tint. I dunno, it seemed like a good idea and would be more distinctive than plain, clear lenses. This time, I specified that I would need them to be effective at night, as I was after a replacement pair, not another pair of part-time glasses. The orange tint is good, offering a hint of colour without washing out my vision and they are fine during night-time conditions.

The orange tint of my regular glasses makes everything look a little 'warmer', removing some of the harsh blue tones out of my vision and offering me quite a relaxed view. The blue tint, on the other hand, enhances the blue tones significantly, washing out my vision with blueness a little because of the stronger tint, and offering a harsher view. The blue glasses reduce the glare from the Sun, but at the cost of increasing the glare of everything else, effectively forcing my eyes to adjust to a relatively bright, but comfortable, view.

Switching between the two pairs of glasses, which I do when coming off my bike or getting on to it, is quite interesting. It reminds me every time of the film Pitch Black with its two Suns, one a glowing orange ball of flame and the other a really bright blue Sun, where the different light sources are represented or exaggerated by dramatic changes in the colour palette in the film. It's all rather sci-fi.